Defends the Gospel of Jesus Christ and confessional Reformed Anglicanism. The term "Reformed" refers to the five solas of the Reformation and the five points of Calvinism. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal constitute the Anglican Formularies, the doctrinal standards of Anglicanism. The Lambeth Articles 1595 and Irish Articles 1615 are Reformed confessions. Isa 1:18,Rom 12:1, 2

About Me

In God's providence my doctrine has changed from Pentecostal Arminianism to Calvinism and Reformed Anglicanism. My Reformed standards are the Anglican Formularies (39 Articles of Religion, 1662 BCP, the Homilies), with the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity. Asbury Seminary, Wilmore, KY, 1995, M.Div. Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida, 1991, B.A., Cum Laude. [Nota Bene: All e-mails to me are considered in the public domain. I reserve the right to post them on the blog. Anonymous comments may or may not be posted at the discretion of the blog owner.]
Anglo-Catholicism and Arminianism are heresies.
I view Amyraldianism as a departure from Reformed theology and I disagree with the three points of common grace and the "gracious offer". I do post or link to sites that disagree with my views at times and having those sites on my blog does not constitute an endorsement of everything said on those sites. I generally endorse the presuppositional apologetics of Gordon H. Clark.
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Martyred for the Gospel

The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Collect of the Day

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Monday, April 26, 2010

I stand corrected on the quote from A. A. Hodge's Outlines of Theology. The quote was pulled out of context from the first edition of the Outlines and not from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology. The second and expanded edition of The Outlines is quoted in my other post. However, even the full context of the first edition shows that A. A. Hodge was not saying that Nestorianism is not a heresy. What he said was that Nestorius was falsely "charged" with the heresy that Christ was two persons. Nestorius never taught two persons but only taught that Christ was one person. Here is the full quote:

14. If Christ had a reasonable soul how can we escape the conviction that he was a human person ?

It is indeed a great mystery that the unity of personality should remain in the God-man, while there are two centers of consciousness, an infinite knowing on the one hand, and a finite knowing on the other, and two distinct though ever harmonious wills. The fact, however, that a God took, not a man, but a human nature into his eternal personality, is clearly revealed in Scripture. The one person is both God and man. The mystery remains for the exercise of our faith.

15. What were the principle heresies which obtained in the early church concerning the constitution of Christ's person ?

1st. The Manichaean heresy, disseminated by Manes, one of the converted Magi, who, during the third century taught a mixed system of religious philosophy, adapting the historical facts of Christianity to the peculiar principles of the Persian philosophy. He taught that Christ and the Holy Ghost were immediate emanations from the eternal God, superior to all creatures, and that the Christ of history was this spiritual being, who appeared among the Jews in the shadow or appearance of a material body, which existed only in the perception of men. As Manes taught that matter is essentially evil, and that Christ appeared for the very purpose of delivering human souls from their entanglement in matter, he necessarily also taught that Christ's human body was only an appearance assumed for the purpose of making his presence known to man as at present organized.

2d. The Apollinariah heresy, disseminated by Apollinaris the younger, bishop of Laodicea, in the fourth century. He taught the orthodox doctrine concerning the trinity, and further that the Eternal Word, second person of the trinity, became incarnate by taking to himself a true human body. On the other hand he denied that Christ had a human soul, since the place of a soul in his person was occupied by his divinity. In his view, then, the person of Christ embraced (1.) the Eternal Word, (2.) a t/w^, or principle of sensitive animal life ; and (3.) a true human body— but no rational human soul.

3d. The Nestorian heresy, charged upon Nestorius, a Syrian by birth, and bishop of Constantinople, during the fifth century, by his enemy, Cyril, the arrogant bishop of Alexandria. Cyril obtained a judgment against Nestorius in the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431,to the effect that he separated the two natures of Christ so far as to teach the coexistence in him of two distinct persons, a God and a man, intimately united. But it is now, however, judged most probable by Protestant historians that Nestorius was personally a brave defender of the true faith, and that i the misrepresentations of his enemies were founded only upon his uncompromising opposition to the dangerous habit then prominently introduced of calling the Virgin Mary the mother of God, because she was the mother of the human nature of Christ. [From: First Edition: A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology. Ch. XX:14-15].

The expanded and revised edition of A. A. Hodges Outlines reads:

What was the Nestorian Heresy?

This term rather expresses an exaggerated, one–sided tendency of speculation on this subject than a positive definable false doctrine. It is the tendency to so emphasize the distinction of the two complete, unmodified natures in Christ, as to throw into the shade the equally revealed fact of the unity of his Person.

This tendency was most conspicuous in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the leader of the Antiochian school, and from him it became the general character of that school. The theology of the Eastern Church of the fourth and fifth centuries was divided between the two great rival schools of Alexandria and Antioch. "In the Alexandrian school, an intuitive mode of thought inclining to the mystical; in the Antiochian, a logical reflective bent of the understanding predominated."—Neander, "Hist.," Torrey's Trans., Vol. 2., p. 352.

Nestorius, who had been a monk at Antioch, became patriarch of Constantinople. He disapproved of the phrase, "Mother of God" (theotokos), as applied to the Virgin, maintaining that Mary had given birth to Christ but not to God. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, opposed him, and both pronounced anathemas against each other. Nestorius supposed, in accordance with the Antiochian mode of thought, that the divine and the human natures of Christ ought to be distinctly separated, and admitted only a suna>feia (junction) of the one and the other, an ejnoi>khsiv (indwelling) of the Deity. Cyril, on the contrary, was led by the tendencies of the Egyptian (Alexandrian) school, to maintain the perfect union of the two natures (fusikh< e[nwsiv). Nestorius, as the representative of his party, was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, AD. 431.—Hagenbach's "Hist. of Doct.," Vol. 1., § 100.

1 comment:

You will have to forgive the lack of a Greek font for the Greek words in parentheses. The web page from which I borrowed the quote did not have the proper fonts. I do not have my hard copy of Hodge handy to replace the Greek with a transliterated Greek.